


Portrait of a Woman

by facetofcathy



Category: White Collar
Genre: Character Study, Comment Fic, Gen, Kink Meme
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-11-18
Updated: 2009-11-18
Packaged: 2017-10-08 22:51:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,594
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/80317
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/facetofcathy/pseuds/facetofcathy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The prompt was: Elizabeth as a model. Neal as a painter.  Peter can watch or whatever.</p><p>It ended up being about looking and seeing.</p><p>Written during Season 1, but could be set anytime in canon.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Portrait of a Woman

"Explain to me again why we're doing this here," Peter said, and he bent to look at the titles of the books Neal had tucked into the bottom shelf. _Jazz Before Pearl Harbour_, _Chicago Jazz_, _The Real American Music_. If they were Neal's. It was hard to tell with this place he'd made for himself in June's house, if the things in it were Neal's, or were just the flotsam of the previous tenants. What was a prop and what was real?

"Because it's easier to move two people here than it is to move this equipment there," Neal said.

Peter turned and looked at Neal, standing beside an easel with a blank canvas resting on it. A litter of paints and brushes covered a nearby table. Peter'd ignored the beret perched at a jaunty angle on Neal's head when he'd first walked in, not wanting to give Neal the satisfaction, but now he couldn't help himself. He glanced at it and raised a brow.

"Too much?" Neal said, and he wasn't quite batting his eyes, but it was a near thing.

"I'll just dig out my eyeliner and draw on a thin little mustache, and you'll be perfect," Elizabeth said.

Peter turned again. El was leaning against the door frame, casual, relaxed, and he realized he'd stuffed his fists in his pockets again, something that made him look tense and defensive, and Neal would have noticed. He pulled his hands out, tried to make his bodyunkink. He was fine with this idea. He'd agreed to this.

Neal had switched all his focus to Elizabeth, striding across the room, never taking his eyes off of her, taking her hand and ushering her into the room. Besides the stupid beret, he had on his usual vest and trousers with the sleeves of his white shirt rolled up. He looked like some relic that had stepped out of an old black and white movie, and he should have been absurd, and Peter should be rolling his eyes and laughing, not staring and smiling like an idiot, while Neal charmed his wife a little more.

Neal showed her around the room, pointed out this thing and that thing, and Peter slowly turned, following their progress. "I just need to check my supplies," Neal said, and turned and busied himself with the mess on the table.

Elizabeth set her purse down on an armchair tucked in a corner "Whenever you're ready" she said, and then she pulled her sweater off and started to carefully fold it.

"Hey, hey, what the hell?"

Elizabeth turned, and Neal looked up from sorting his paints, or whatever he'd been doing, and Peter was met with identical guileless expressions--wide blue eyes and a pair of easy smiles, both framed by dark brown hair. Neal's pose looked studied, like he was saying, I know that you know that I'm guilty, but pretending is fun, so... Elizabeth's innocence looked like the real thing, or would to someone who didn't know better.

"This was supposed to be a portrait," Peter said sternly. He was starting to feel like some sitcom father with a wayward teenager whenever Neal was around. Or maybe a pair of them, given that Elizabeth was unbuttoning her jeans and ignoring them both.

"I only do life studies," Neal said.

"Really," Peter said, and his hands were jammed back in his pockets and he was almost bouncing up on his toes, and he didn't give a damn how it looked.

"Yes, really." Neal frowned at him, made his face look even more open and honest. He actually had the audacity to let his hand flutter up and land over his heart. "I wouldn't lie to you, Peter."

"You don't know how not to," Peter said. "El, come on this is crazy, let's just go home."

"I said I would prove to Neal that he could use his talents completely legally, and that's what I'm going to do. Now sit over there and behave. This is going to be fine."

"See, honey, I told you it'd be fine," Elizabeth said.

Peter crossed his arms over his chest and glared at the spot on the wall he'd been staring at since he'd sat down. He'd surrendered. That was the truth of it, surrendered and sat down and refused to watch Neal sketching on the canvas with firm confident strokes, like he really did know what he was doing, or at least, like always, could fake it really well. Refused to watch El lounging prone on some piece of vintage furniture, with her head propped up on one hand, the other arm curved around her breasts.

She'd won, and Peter had capitulated, and she'd done it by simply failing to stop taking her clothes off. Neal kept on sketching. El kept on not moving. Peter kept on not looking.

It was warm in the room, in deference to Elizabeth, and Peter could stand to lose his jacket, but he'd been reluctant to take it off. He was uncomfortable, but he didn't care, it did no harm to remember that getting comfortable with Neal Caffrey wasn't safe.

"I need--" Neal said, "your hair, Elizabeth. Peter, could you just. I want her hair off her face, the face is what matters."

"If the face is what matters, then why is she naked?"

"The body is beautiful, Peter. Elizabeth is beautiful--perfect symmetry in every curve, excellent proportion, the right lines and angles to take the light." Neal was staring at him now, the full force of his concentration that he'd been examining Elizabeth with was now pinning Peter to the chair. Behind Neal, Peter could see the sketch, curving stokes of the pencil, lines that described a body that he loved, that he'd considered something only he would ever see like this. "But the person inside the body is revealed in the face, Peter. It's in the eyes, where the life is, the soul." Peter had spent enough time trying to see into NealCaffrey's soul and never getting past the surface to doubt that.

Neal turned to El, gestured with a graceful sweep of his hand. "Just, come over here and brush back her hair, Peter, you'll see what I mean."

Peter got up out of the chair, met Elizabeth's amused glance as he crossed the room. He squatted down in front of El, while Neal remained a few paces behind; he'd never come closer than twice his arm's length to her since she'd started to strip. Peter reached out and softly brushed El's hair back until the dark fall of it framed her face. He could feel Neal's gaze on him, tracking his motion. Her smile deepened, and something warm flared in her eyes, something familiar. Her skin was flushed and warm under his hands, and if Neal hadn't been there, he wouldn't have stopped touching her.

"Look at her face," Neal said.

Peter looked.

"Her eyes, look at her eyes, the crows feet and the laugh lines by her lips. Just look at her lips, perfect for smiling, perfect for laughing." El almost grinned at that, delight and a little mockery dancing in her eyes. "The way the flush of life shows on her cheeks, the depth of life in her eyes. That's the whole point of the painting, without the face, the body is an object." Neal sounded sincere, rapt, honestly and purely admiring. El looked like she believed some of it.

"You sound like a real artist," Peter said. He stood up, ignoring the crack of his knees, stepped back, resumed his seat in the chair, but not before he'd shrugged out of his jacket and slung it over the back.

"That's why we're here isn't it? Because Elizabeth thinks that's what I can be," Neal said, not quite hiding the scent of real doubt that clung to his words.

"You can," she said, and she sounded completely sure, and Neal gave her a stern look for speaking and breaking her pose, but he looked buoyed up by her words, her confidence, and Peter knew what it was like to sail that sea. The way was always clear, the course certain, and when he came down from the high-wire act his job could sometimes be, it was what he always craved, what set him right again.

"I can fake it, at least," Neal said, and he bent forward to sketch in the lines of El's face, all the years of laughter and tears and happiness and imperfect perfection that lived on her skin. It was there for anyone to see, if they cared to look.

Peter settled into his chair, turned to look at El, the dips and curves of her back, the round firm muscles of her legs, the barest hint of a curve of her breast. He saw the woman he'd met, the woman he married, when he looked at her. She was something solid and real and honest and unchanging, no matter how much she changed.

He turned to Neal again, and saw layers--the clothes that were almost a costume, the silliness of the hat, the serious way his hand held the pencil, the intensity of his concentration and the fluttering emptiness of every word he said, until suddenly his words _seemed_ weighted down with meaning.

He would wait and see what Neal put on that canvas. See what Neal saw when he looked at El, and if he saw the same things Peter did, then maybe he wasn't faking at all. Or at least not all the time.


End file.
